Abu Dhabi-based ePointZero has announced a deal to acquire a 90% stake in pan-African independent power producer Azura Power Holdings.

The transaction will give the subsidiary of UAE investment group 2PointZero control of 752MW of operating power generation capacity across Nigeria, Senegal and Mozambique.

The company will acquire the respective stakes held by existing shareholders Actis and Africa50 through an acquisition vehicle established with Amaya Capital, an Africa-focused investment firm based in London.

Amaya Capital founded Azuro Power in 2010 and will retain a 10% minority stake in the company, which also has a development pipeline of more than 1.5GW of planned power projects.

The pipeline includes expansions at existing sites, as well as new gas and renewable energy projects and battery energy storage systems.

Azuro Power’s operating portfolio comprises the 461MW Azura-Edo power plant in Nigeria, the 116MW Tobene power plant in Senegal and the 175MW Central Termica de Ressano Garcia plant in Mozambique. The company’s operating assets generate around 10% of each country’s grid baseload power, the statement said.

The company’s projects have received financing and support from development finance institutions including the World Bank, British International Investment, German Investment & Development Company, the US International Development Finance Corporation, the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank, the International Finance Corporation, the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency and France’s Proparco.

The deal, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, marks ePointZero’s entry into African power generation and follows the acquisition of a 20% stake in Egypt’s Elsewedy Electric in 2024.

New discoveries
As a result of comprehensive interpretations of legacy geological data nd new, advanced seismic surveys, regional NOCs were able to announce discoveries of considerable unconventional resources in 2020.

The year also saw state energy players present noteworthy capital expenditure budgets towards the economic recovery of resources, particularly the production of gas, from existing and new tight and shale plays.

Saudi Arabia's unconventional programme has witnessed start-stop periods over decades, during which state energy giant Saudi Aramco had been working to determine the extent and economic potential of reserves available. The kingdom's unconventional campaign was flagged off in 2014, with Aramco awarding UK-based Wood Group a project management services deal, which was extended for two years in January 2020.

There are three areas Aramco has earmarked for commercial development: Turaif in the Northern Borders province and the giant Jafurah basin and South Ghawar, both of which are located in the Eastern Province.

In 2017, the first unconventional gas development project took shape in the north - extracting tight gas from the Turaif deposit to feed a new power station at the nearby Waad al-Shamal industrial city, and thereby solving the problem of the latter lacking a connection to Aramco's cross-country Master Gas System distribution network.